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This is the conversation in the hall between two ladies leaving a party in one of du Maurier's most characteristic drawings. On every side there are footmen and a crowd of guests cloaking and departing. Of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns Mr.
I should like to be as rich as our Squire best; but it would do to be as rich as Farmer Tomkyns. Oh, if I had only half as many sheep, and pigs, and cows, and haystacks, as he has, how happy I should be! Don't you wish you had some of the Squire's or Farmer Tomkyns's riches, Ned?" "No," replied Ned, "I don't; because we ought not to wish for other people's things."
He rather entered into Mrs. de Tomkyns' aims, and showed it by making her pretty.
Farmer Tomkyns says he will employ me all through the winter, and pay me the same wages that he does now. This is one piece of good news. And the other is, that Mr. Stockwell, the greengrocer, will buy all my apricots, and give me a good price for them. I am to take them to him next market-day. I had to wait more than half-an-hour before I could speak to him, and that made me so late.
Henry James has said: "This lady is a real creation.... She is not one of the heroines of the æsthetic movement, though we may be sure she dabbles in that movement so far as it pays to do so. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns is a little of everything, in so far as anything pays. She is always on the look-out; she never misses an opportunity.
Tomkyns, who was sailing on the smooth sea of preferment with a fair wind, did not wish to get into trouble, but at last he let the book pass, Perhaps he thought it was only religious verse written for the sectaries, which would never be heard of at court, or among the wits, and that therefore it was of little consequence what it contained.
He has his hands in his pockets, his head poked forward; what is going on is quite beyond his comprehension. He vaguely wonders what his wife will do next; her manoeuvres quite transcend him. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns always succeeds. She is never at fault; she is as quick as the instinct of self-preservation.
She is not a specialist, for that cuts off too many opportunities, and the æsthetic people have the tort as the French say, to be specialists. No, Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns is what shall we call her? well, she is the modern social spirit. She is prepared for everything; she is ready to take advantage of everything; she would invite Mr.
It describes the type of woman revealed in Mrs. de Tomkyns when we have followed her adventures up a little way in the back numbers of Punch. But, if we may be permitted the slang, the type itself is anything but "a back number."
"She snubs one so I really can't bear it! Let us go to Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns. Daughter. "But Mrs. Tomkyns snubs one worse than Lady Oscar, Mamma!" Mamma. "Pooh, my love! who cares for the snubs of a Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns I should like to know, so long as she's clever enough to get the right people."
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